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From: kestrel.raveling@unify.UUCP (Paul Raveling)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Open look vs Motif
Message-ID: <9007031645.AA00970@kestrel.>
Date: 3 Jul 90 16:45:45 GMT
References: <9007031301.AA08567@zephyrus.crd.Ge.Com>
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
Reply-To: think!ames!unify.com!OpenLook@eddie.mit.edu
Organization: The Internet
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	This is routed to the xpert mailing list as well as to the
	OpenLook list.  xpert/comp.windows.x readers might want to
	know that this follows from a discussion of the relative merits
	of Motif and OpenLook.

> In article <9158@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> Bill Davidson writes:
> |> From: unify!kestrel.raveling@uunet.uu.net (Paul Raveling)
> 
> |> 	It may be worth mentioning vanilla MIT X11 as an alternative.
...
>   You may *like* it better, but in what way is it technically better? My
> personal choice is MOTIF, but I regularly use olwm over twm because of
> the consistent button usage.

	I'd argue that twm at least is technically better than olwm
	because it provides capabilities that seem to be unavailable
	with olwm, and some of them are important.  If there's a way
	to get olwm to do some of these and I'm not aware of it, I'd
	be delighted to hear about it.

	Some items of this sort are:

		0.  QUIT GRABBING MY FUNCTION KEYS.
		1.  ALWAYS raise a window when it's moved or resized
		2.  Quit adding an internal border to all windows.
		3.  Disable titlebars on a per-client basis


	Perhaps those and various others could be phrased in a more
	general way as:

		If the default behaviors aren't ideal, provide easy
		ways to change ANY default behavior.  This also means
		that I have some quarrels with various aspects of
		the OpenLook Way of Life in general.

	Something else I've been waiting for is a window manager, or
	any client for that matter, that could handle an interactive
	dialog to reconfigure its options.  Users, and maybe even
	developers, shouldn't always have to sort out whether to change
	.whatnotrc, .Xresources, .Xdefaults, or (gasp)
	/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/whatever [or Whatever, or WHatever].


------------------
Paul Raveling
Raveling@unify.com